Grill of the city
Tyler Meyer
Executive Director and part of the leadership team
Lamar Johnson collaboration
“Lamar Johnson Collaborative (LJC) is seeing three trends at play in the St. Louis market,” says Meyr. “The first is that downtown and suburban St. Louis have not replenished office space since the pandemic. The submarket in the nearby city of Clayton has strong pricing and demand, but the overall corporate market remains being a challenge The second trend, and driver of the St. Louis construction market, is that all local universities are investing in facilities to attract and retain talent , there is always uncertainty around an election year, and with interest rates remaining high, project starts have slowed.Once some of that uncertainty has been resolved, rates d ‘interest falls and inflation stabilizes as expected, developers currently planning projects can decide whether to move in. Much of the initial planning is underway as our clients assess the market for St. Louis, which creates opportunities for LJC as designers to move forward with projects once conditions are more favorable.”
LJC was founded in 1999 and has 350 employees.
The price increase affects LJC as a design company. One of the ways we address this is through our integrated approach by design, which leverages the different disciplines of our firm, including master planning, architecture and interiors. LJC also sits within the larger Clayco Enterprise to collaborate on the development, construction and engineering of things, allowing us to adjust to evolving market conditions and business opportunities. While our collective integrated delivery approach is an attractive proposition, each of the individual entities has the ability to work on their own projects, which gives us a degree of flexibility. This diversity of projects and the ability to work on a project at different stages of the planning process is one of LJC’s strengths.
